Thoughts about other a-life progs.

[PurpleYouko]

Creatures could also be considered abandonware.

Wish I had known that back in 1998 when I bought it. perhaps I would have waited and saved my 20 quid.

Then again, if I hadn't bought it then I wouldn't have realized how boring it actually is to watch these strange and cute little creatures wandering about their incredibly limited world.

This game could have been really cool but I don't think it was ever really developed enough.

[Numsgil]

"boring" is the word I would use to.  Interesting, for a time, but it's just too difficult to get any kind of ecosystem going.

[Welwordion]

Just a thought, but let us make another alife game besides Darwinbots, I just need some new stuff with better possibilities.
Oh and I do  mean seomthing which uses more bottom to up principles instead of up to bottom ones like Darwinbots use.
This would also make it easier to programm such stuff as we do not need to implement certain effects but rather hope they will arise from simple interactions, its just needs some more know how and inpiration.

This would also enable us to programm something where genes or whatever mutations could be programmed more specifically

[Numsgil]

A while ago a number of forum members went off to try and start their own programs, but most seem rather "abandoned" as of late.

It's alot of hard work.

[Welwordion]

Yeah probably , thats why I think its worth to discuss such stuff and come up with soemthing thats simple enough ,yet worth to programm before going of to create a game thats just another simple bot variant clone.
I mean lets first think how such a game should be, after that we can still decide if we want to give it a try.

[Numsgil]

Well first you have to figure out exactly what you're trying to model.  DB is about behavioral evolution.  Avida is about reproduction (specifically the mechanisms needed to reproduce).

[Testlund]

One way could be to get a hold of the source code from one of those A-life programs and develop them further.  ...or just try to make a similar program with more features.

[Welwordion]

I doubt the approach most games take to simulate life,s o no improving of something I not believe in stuff.

Ok all things search for stability, you could say the have an intern fitness functiion that stems from the minimation of force and the darwinian concept, life in this concept can be understood  as the cooperation of parts that influence the fitness function to their advantage by changing local conditions(which influence the stability of an pattern).
So I would try an concept where manifold structures can arise from basic concepts, may the geometrical or chemical or simple gicven trough an cellular automata. These structures would now need a basic set of rules to interact so a function can be determined(like proteins work by their geometrical structure).

After creating this basic biochemistry we could introduce an Ai that is able to perform basic actions to contol its "body", where this AI would "learn" to work with its body by a system of association( to associate a certain feedback with certain actions)

[Numsgil]

Let me rant about emergence for a moment.  

People see emergence as some sort of magic bullet that wonderfully gives you a balanced and working system with minimal thought or effort. It just does all the work for you, yippee!

It doesn't work like that.

What you're basically doing is making the emergent properties decide the basic interworkings of your system for you. That is, you're turning over creative control of all the processes to something that, by its very nature, you have limited control over.

The benefits of an emergent system are that literally thousands and perhaps millions of design decisions are made for you. The pitfall is that literally thousands and millions of design decisions are made for you.

That's a two edged sword.  You give up total control in the hopes that something brilliant will come from it.

Most emergent systems aren't that brilliant.  There's some single best solution and it's fairly boring.

So when someone says "my system will be entirely emergent" it tells me they've never created an emergent system, and their results are probably going to be rather limited.

You should first decide what you want to see happen in your system specifically and then decide how to get there, wether through thousands of high end rules are several dozen low order rules.

The one benefit of emergence is self-consistancy, so I tend to use it in areas that have several thousand decisions to be made and needs to be fairly consistant. DB's future metabolism feature would be a good example.  But emergence works there because of the inherant self-similarity of that system.  A + B turns into C, which has exactly similar properties to A and B, but just with different magnitudes.

[Welwordion]

Well let me take a minute to rant over "designed" systems, the creator often thinks that coming up with a system to mimick a certain aspect of life and the adding dozen of features makes a good game, but in reality he just creates some kind of predetermined movie with some alternative telling order.(I want to learn soemthing new and not only see something I created in the code )

Emergent systems are far from beeing easy soltutions, rather it needs more mindwork and trial and error to find a good system instead of programming dozens of strange code that eats calculation power and such limits complexity.(If you ever tried to find cellular automata rule that give interesting results you know what I mean)


Also its exactly the biochemical aspects I want to create by relying on an open sytem like 3 or 4 dimensional geometry etc. I am more than aware that many systems will only give one predetermined optimum and that is exactly the reason I am not going with the first best idea but rather want to hold a detailed conversation about this.
Also I am aware of the limis of a purely physical/biochemistrical system which is why I introduce the Ai "soul" into the components object consists of.

[Numsgil]

Emergent systems are from beeing easy soltutions, rather it needs more mindwork and trial and error to find a good system instead of programming dozens of strange code that eats calculation power

 Emergent simulations almost always require more calculation power because you can't optimize them the way you can with a designed system.
 
 

(If you ever tried to find cellular automata rule that give interesting results you know what I mean)

 Exactly my point.  A good emergent system with "interesting" results is difficult to create.  Alot of time you're better off just designing something as upper level rules.  It's only really worth it when the number of interactions is simply unfeasible to create by hand.
 
 Basically emergence is a mean to an end, not an end in itself.

[Welwordion]

Well if you call it a mean to an end, my end would be asystem with multiple aka dynamically changing optimums that allow for different biochemical approaches to coexist (like having carbon, silicium and whatever lifeforms in the same simulation)

Currently I am trying my mind really hard to find a system which would allow that, which would have such freedom and you should notice tha every sytem which has an dynamical changing optimum is automatically ermergent as you can not predict the path this might take.

I mean look ar my previous approach with mutating fitness function competing, its te same basic idea when the physics itself are object to mutation the optimums might also change.
A part of the hard thinking is also to create a system with an open biochemistry that still controllable for an Ai and delivers enough input, sensory data to do so.

[Welwordion]

How about we have some central core with  AI , movement ability and senses that can attach other objects to it and everything neutral which in turn is attached to it also belongs to its "body". When one of these cores is able to directly touch another core with its body, it overwrites it and also there might be a limitation to the "lifetime"
of a core which means it will autodelete itself after some certain time, creating empty core as "food".
So basically they would try to disassemble the hull of others to eat them.
This way protection, speed, control etc would counterbalance itself and as different bodies are composed of different chemicals, they need different digestion methods and structures that are able to come in contact with the specific component (lock and key principle)

(I also thought on a possible chemisty based on triangular objects but I will wait to expalain the idea until I got your feedaback on the core concept)

[Numsgil]

You're basically proposing DB with metabolism

The problem with trying to simulate life as a biochemical process is that biological chemistry is intractable with modern hardware.

It takes supercomputers (or thousands of smaller computers hooked in parallel) to simulate the interactions of single protiens.

Which means you're going to be simplifying some things and presenting some high level rules.

Anything with different species competing and evolving in a rock-paper-scissors type system is going to be a dynamic fitness function.  I've seen several DB simulations run in which the changing of one species (plants) causes the bots to move towards a different optimum.

[Welwordion]

I doubt your analysis highly.  
First your saying that I am proposing Darwinbots with Metabolism, the reason you do is that I introduce agentlike structures into my idea mix. However apllying  this definition, all games using agents would just be Darwinbots.
Second you say that biochemistry can only be simulated by supercomputer, however you take carbonic real life
chemistry as a measurement , which only confirms something I am thinking since a long time, that you try to imitate our life on earth to much instead of concentrating on a information theoretical abstraction which helps in a simplified approach.(well only your rock, paper, scissors argument is probably true, although I still have to observe this in one of my own simulations, but your quite better with finding good running cnditions for those sims)
 

For example the system I had in mind was based on the thought that each site of the triangle has a color/type
this colors woule repulse or attach to certain other colors, additional attachment could influence the shape of triangles by changing the position of the corner mark opposing the attachment site, such either stretching,kepping the form or shortening the triangle.
This would enable trough geometry and different color combinations  the forming of more complex body parts.
Additional the "core" could overwrite/change a certain number of reactions per round in order to control the growth and interaction of his body(besides moving and rotating when needed).
Example if a triangle with the wrong color combination tries to attach to a certain triangle of the growing body
the core could change this to repulse, or he could change repulse to atatching to make certain combinations
work out(which however means he would have to use that writing point every turn on this task).
The core could also use the change of form to orientated an bend certain limbs.
This could also be used to digest neutral/dead bodies by attaching to them, converting them into your own body and then seperating them.